[TSOY] The Standard Family

[Jason Morningstar]

I ran the first session of a Shadow of Yesterday mini-campaign last night and it went really well.  Five players, one new to our group but a friend.  We'd chatted about character concepts and hashed out the general setting via email over the previous week, so the game got started with a minimum of fiddling around.  Since we'll be playing for five or six sessions, I really stressed interconnections and mutually beneficial key combinations.  The PCs are all members of an extended family, the Standards, and have various tense relationships with one another.  I'd done about an hour of actual prep and thought about it quite a lot.

The game is nominally set in 1898, during the Klondike gold rush, a time and place I dearly love.  I've lived in Alaska and hiked the Chilkoot trail and hung out in the towns of the Lynn canal.  The first session was really preparatory, introducing some important NPCs and thematic elements as well as painting a picture of Skagway during the stampede.  Almost all the conflicts were between players, and there was no violence - the threat was there, and it will come later, but it was a very civilized session.  Everybody really stepped up and used their keys, creating conflicts for themselves and others.  One of my favorite plot threads:

Aunt Hettie Standard, the headstrong and deeply religious matriarch, befriended a "soiled dove" during the trip up the inside passage, an uncouth young woman named Betty McNelly.  With the help of her refined but practical daughter Annie, Hettie sought to gently reform this brazen and ambitious prostitute.  There were some great conflicts about needlework (thank you, TSOY!), and with Hettie's brother, the family partiarch, who didn't want a whore in his stateroom.  Young Nahum Standard, a sissified book-smart milquetoast, doesn't even know what a prostitute is, and befriends Betty, completely miscommunicating his intentions.  Nahum later visits her at the "dance hall" in Skagway, where she matter-of-factly asks him to take his pants off, and he runs away in terror.  Later on, the whole family is headed for the Presbyterian church (the result of another conflict, since rough uncle Zeke didn't want to go.  Pain was Brought Down.  Key of Religion was invoked.)  And who should be standing around guiltily in her wanton best but Betty McNelly, afraid to enter the church yard.  Hettie takes her under her wing and shames the pastor, who at first refuses her entry (Key of Religion was a real money-maker this session).  So we're treated to the wonderful scene of Betty slowly being reformed while Nahum, sitting directly behind her, smells the perfume in her hair, smitten and terrified. 

TSOY, of course, absolutely delivers - my friend Robo, playing Nahum, created a character who is an utter failure, a physical wreck, a bookish fop raised by women who desperately seeks his father's approval.  He lost every conflict he entered, and Robo raked in the XP and had a great time.  Everybody was like "Oh man, one day Nahum is going to come into his own and some keys are getting burned and he will throw down."

One thing I really loved was my ability to invoke details based on personal experience - the cloudy, silt-filled water of the Taiya river, the telegraph office in Jeff Smith's saloon, what the mountains looked like, devil's club choking scree slopes.  Having intimate experience with the region really helped me bring it to life and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. 

[Doyce]

Man, this sounds awesome.  I've two questions/requests:

1. Can you break down the Needlepoint conflict?  I crave details the way I crave a good PB&J sandwich.
2. I'm am intrigued by this Key of Religion, and wish to learn more.

Cheers,

Doyce

[Jason Morningstar]

I think it's actually the key of "got religion", technically, and I'll let Segedy or Isbo weigh in, if they're following this thread.  You get XP for inserting your faith into decision making and conflicts in an ostentatious way. 

Lessee, needlepoint.  Hettie has the secret of Hidden Meaning related to her ladies' crafts, and we're using that like a precision-guided munition to allow her to influence conflicts through gift-giving, keepsakes, decorating, etc.  So her and Annie, her daughter, grab Betty McNelly from among the prostitutes heading for Skagway and make a project out of her.  They teach her some needlework - she doesn't want to learn.  They use their own needlework to bring home points about upright living and civility and win a tiny bit of mindshare.  They give Betty a sampler as a gift.  Then, awesome of awesomes, in a later scene Nahum, the 20-year-old momma's boy raised by Aunt Hettie, is visiting Betty in her brum crib, a complete innocent, and she assumes he's come as a customer.  There's a conflict over whether he loses his virginity, and Isbo, Hettie's player, narrates her own needlework sampler tacked on the wall of the crib to bring in a bonus die. It turns the tide, Nahum sees his foster-mother's handiwork over the bed, and flees. 

[Steve Segedy]

I believe the Key that Hettie has is actually just the Key of Faith, straight from the book:

Key of Faith

Your character has a strong religious belief that guides her. Gain 1 XP every time she defends her faith to others. Gain 2 XP whenever this character converts someone to her faith. Gain 5 XP whenever this character defends her faith even though it brings her great harm. Buyoff: Your character renounces her beliefs. (see Key of Religion?)

However, we also added our own "Key of Got Religion", which was intended to be more of a holy-roller specialty, where faith isn't necessarily involved, so maybe she was using that:

Key of Got Religion

Your character's got religion! 1XP for quoting from the good book appropriately, +2 XP for making a decision or getting into a conflict based on a passage or blasphemy, +5 for bringing on armaggedon because of that confounded book! (see also Key of Faith)

[Doyce]

This leads me into a follow-on question about the Secret of Hidden Meaning, but damn that's some fine and funny play.

[Steve Segedy]

The needlework conflict was based on the Complex Crafts ability, as was the cooking-oriented test that went before it (a tasty pot of beans to lure the hungry soul to the discussion).  I think the first stakes were something along the lines of "put a seed of doubt in her mind that whoring is the only role for a woman in Skagway".

I don't recall where we picked up the "Secret of Inner Meaning" (perhaps randomwiki?) but it goes like this:

Secret of Inner Meaning

Your character's art carries a meaning beyond the surface. Use any non-physical Instinct-based ability at a distance via a piece of your character's art. Cost: 2 Reason.

[Doyce]

Oh!  "INNER" meaning.  I was searching around for "Hidden" Meaning.  I *knew* it sounded familiar.

[Isbo]

On needlework:
If memory serves me correctly, Hettie weighed into the Betty soul-saving with good ol' fashion Sway, receiving a bonus die from Annie's Craft roll ('wow, needlework really is cool...not giving up sinning cool, but still...').  I'm hoping to see more of Betty, so I am all about small steps leading to bigger payoffs (and potentially juicy tension with Nahum's nascent interests in Betty).

I went for the Key of Got Religion--I plan to get into more tussles over religion than converting people to it.  The conflict with the preacher made me happy--nothing quite so fun as shaming the preacher in his own church!

And, yeah, Nahum's painful incompetence joined to his eagerness to please his father was a real show-stealer.  His uncle Zeke's efforts to introduce him to manly activities like gamblin', drinkin', and shootin' look to be great seeds for conflicts with Annie and Hettie, who are both looking out for him in their own way.

[Jason Morningstar]

Our second session was last night, and I threw them a big curveball - passing through a savage blizzard near the summit of Mt. Hoffman, they emerged in a Frank Frazetta painting.  That is, a weird fantasy land where nobody wears enough clothes and the bad guys ride around on giant lizards.  So there's this hardscrabble 1898 family of stampeders out to strike it rich, and instead of panning for gold, they are rescuing maidens tied to poles as sacrifices to gigantic cave bears, and fighting snake-worshipping volcano men, and so forth.  There's a magic gate, you see, and somehow they can travel back in forth.  The family patriarch vanished into this land 13 years ago, and they will get to meet his widow and son.  The locals are a civilized but primitive people who look longingly at their WInchester repeaters.  And of course there are those snake men, and they've got their hands on some long guns, so somebody else is using that gate.  It's all very colorful and fun - I did some homework on the Pleistocene era, and am introducing all kinds of crazy-ass beasts.  The good guys ride three-ton wombats. 

The most interesting and satisfying thing about this session was the immediate lock-on to social drama.  Once the player characters got acclimated to this strange civilization, keys started changing.  That woman tied to the pole as bear food, Lady Sakaa?  The crusty old seventh cavalry uncle bought the key of Love for her right away.  But she's promised to the gallant knight of House Mesazu, Dampener Ku!  And speaking of Ku, apparently Annie (played by Steve) can't resist a man riding a diprotodont, because she's fallen hard for him.  And their mountain guide, Junior Powles, is way in love with her, so there's suddenly a love pentagon or something.  It's all player driven and just instantly sizzling. 

[Ricky Donato]

Hi, Jason,

How did the players react to the sudden change in setting? Had you discussed this with them beforehand? I'm feeling that if my SG had made such a radical change to the game without my input or consent, I might get pissed, so I'm interested to know how your group went with it.

[Steve Segedy]

Well, there was some question about whether Jason's scheme would go off well, but two of us already had forewarning (though we kept it to ourselves) and several of the others know Jason well enough to not be too suprised.  In fact, one of them started beating an old drum about how we can never get a "straight Western" game, because we always have to introduce ancient Aztec cities, nazis, morlocks or some other anachronistic thing.

Overall though, it went really well, I thought, and everybody seemed to have fun.  The inter-player drama was really tight, and Keys were pinging like crazy.  The moment when half the player characters were caught in the leading edge of an avalanche (because they were all busy trying to save each other) was an experience point tornado!

[Ricky Donato]

Sounds awesome!

On average, how much XP did each character earn over the session? And how long was the session? I'd like to get a sense of the XP rate.

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey Ricky,

I did have a slight concern that the change-up would be considered bad faith, or GM muscle-flexing, or just lame, but everybody rolled with it and it opened many interesting doors - one guy has a character who will absolutely thrive in Frazetta world, who had some serious constraints in Klondike world. I'm hoping Aunt Hettie tries to convert them all to Christianity. 

This is a mini-campaign and I really stessed interdependent keys, and my expectation is that a key ought to be burned off every session if we're hitting on all cylinders.  That has more or less happened, and I'm guessing people are getting around 15-20 XP per session?  That'd be 5 per hour, I guess.  Anybody want to correct me there?

[Jason Morningstar]

I should add that there was plenty of foreshadowing of weirdness to come in the first session, so I doubt that it came as an absolute shock that things were not as they seemed.  There were some satisfied nods around the table as odd stuff they experienced in Skagway fell into place. 

[Ricky Donato]

This is a mini-campaign and I really stessed interdependent keys, and my expectation is that a key ought to be burned off every session if we're hitting on all cylinders.  That has more or less happened, and I'm guessing people are getting around 15-20 XP per session?  That'd be 5 per hour, I guess.  Anybody want to correct me there?

That's good to know. In my first game with a new group last week, we each earned 15 XP in an hour and a half. I worried that we were using the Keys at a too fine-grained level, giving them out for individual moments rather than scenes. It looks like I was right. I'll remember that.

Thanks for the really helpful info, everyone.